Silencing Mouth
*Group performing research & Practice
Members: I-Shun Lee, Ines Cruz, Rita Torrao, Maria Jose Diaz, Marina Mattos
'Silencing Mouth’ is a work in progress research which magnifies mouth on stage, looking at it as a potential arena to explore bodily censorship. Mouth’s liminal character – being inner and outer body, private and public and comprising multiple functions – makes it the most suitable space to control, manipulate, restrict and test free-will through the lenses of physical, social and political.
‘This presentation performatively actioned and ‘analyzed’ documentation of theoretical arguments concerned with censorship and the body (...) a ritual through which the ‘victim’ is selected, laid down on a table, paralyzed with tape and blindfolded. Silencing actions inflicted upon one presenter’s mouth with carefully selected materials (all of which are amplified by a projected close up of the obstructed mouth). Each iteration is correlated with theoretical arguments on ‘silence’, ‘beauty’, ‘facial features’ and ‘becoming-animal’, thereby advancing an overall argument concerned with a critique of bodily censorship (including of course speech) and the question of its subversion via ‘becoming-animal‘. Although the presenters did not speak a word during this presentation, the projected text was read out loud by a digitized male voice providing a sharp contrast with the noises produced by the tortured mouths of the female presenters.’ (Simon Donger, the course leader in MA Scenography in RCSSD)
*Group performing research & Practice
Members: I-Shun Lee, Ines Cruz, Rita Torrao, Maria Jose Diaz, Marina Mattos
'Silencing Mouth’ is a work in progress research which magnifies mouth on stage, looking at it as a potential arena to explore bodily censorship. Mouth’s liminal character – being inner and outer body, private and public and comprising multiple functions – makes it the most suitable space to control, manipulate, restrict and test free-will through the lenses of physical, social and political.
‘This presentation performatively actioned and ‘analyzed’ documentation of theoretical arguments concerned with censorship and the body (...) a ritual through which the ‘victim’ is selected, laid down on a table, paralyzed with tape and blindfolded. Silencing actions inflicted upon one presenter’s mouth with carefully selected materials (all of which are amplified by a projected close up of the obstructed mouth). Each iteration is correlated with theoretical arguments on ‘silence’, ‘beauty’, ‘facial features’ and ‘becoming-animal’, thereby advancing an overall argument concerned with a critique of bodily censorship (including of course speech) and the question of its subversion via ‘becoming-animal‘. Although the presenters did not speak a word during this presentation, the projected text was read out loud by a digitized male voice providing a sharp contrast with the noises produced by the tortured mouths of the female presenters.’ (Simon Donger, the course leader in MA Scenography in RCSSD)
